MAP-IT: A Model for Implementing Healthy People 2020

What is MAP-IT? MAP-IT is a framework for planning and evaluating public health interventions in a community. MAP-IT has five steps: Mobilize individuals and organizations that care about the health of your community into a coalition. Assess the areas of greatest need in your community, and the strengths and resources that you can tap into to address those areas. Plan your approach: start with a vision of where you want to be as a community; add strategies and action steps to help achieve that vision. Implement your plan using concrete action steps that can be monitored and will make a difference. Track your progress over time.

Why use MAP-IT? It involves all stakeholders, making for a widely-supported and community-owned effort. It assesses assets as well as needs, and looks for ways to use them. Assessment means that the effort will start from the reality of the community, rather than from some preconceived idea of what’s necessary or what resources are available. It produces a comprehensive and specific plan, with reasonable timelines, assigned responsibility, clear objectives, and well-defined action steps related to an overall strategy. It incorporates evaluation from the beginning, allowing adjustment when necessary.

How do you use MAP-IT? 1. Mobilize Consider what you want coalition partners to do and how the coalition might be organized. Brainstorm potential partners. Recruit coalition members. Create a vision for the coalition.

How do you use MAP-IT? (cont.) 2. Assess Collect locally available data about resources and needs. Collect information from public and archival sources. Determine what issues are most important to community residents and key stakeholders. Identify community assets, including people, skills, capacity and capacity building, space, organizations and institutions, knowledge, funds, etc. Based on data and community priorities, prioritize needs by consensus. Establish baseline data.

How do you use MAP-IT? (cont.) 3. Plan Choose the issue(s) the initiative will work on. Set clear objectives. For each objective, develop an action plan that includes: A strategy and tactics A timeline with reasonable time targets for each phase of the strategy The responsible parties and their roles and tasks Indicators and/or other measures of progress

How do you use MAP-IT? (cont.) 4. Implement Identify an individual or organization to serve as the coordinating point for the implementation of the initiative. Make sure that everyone involved knows what’s going on and what everyone else is doing. Use the media and other channels to inform the community about the work of the initiative.

How do you use MAP-IT? (cont.) 5. Track Start your evaluation and monitoring at the very beginning of your initiative, if possible. Set up a system for gathering data. Consider: Data Quality Limitations of self-reported data Data validity and reliability Data availability Organize and analyze data on a regular basis, so that you can make appropriate adjustments in your work as time goes on. Share progress and successes with the community.

MAP-IT: Additional Resources Healthy People 2020, http://healthypeople.gov/ - Healthy People is a collaboration between several different organizations with the mission of setting objectives for the health of the nation. They provide the MAP-IT framework for Implementation, as well as many other useful pages, including: Organizing a Coalition: http://healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/QuestionsToConsider.pdf - Provides a list of important questions to consider before organizing a coalition, in a printable format that allows you to fill out answers to the questions and/or distribute them to a planning group. Potential Partners: http://healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/BrainstormPotenial.pdf A checklist that will help you think of all possibilities for potential partners for your effort. Prioritizing Issues: http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/PrioritizingIssues.pdf An exercise that will assist you in determining which issues it is most important for your effort to undertake. Community Assets: http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/BrainstormCommunity.pdf A checklist to assist you in determining community assets that are available. Measuring Progress: http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/implementing/MeasuringProgress.pdf Helpful formulas for quantitatively measuring your progress.